People

Born in Russia and raised in England, Germany, Texas, New Jersey, Arizona, and New York, it’s natural for Leo Gribelyuk to see things from varying perspectives. As a fourth-year student at the Geisel School of Medicine and an MBA candidate at the Tuck School of Business, he bridges the practice of medicine and the business of medicine. And the international experience he’s gained through Dartmouth – in Tanzania and Honduras – has sensitized him to the forces of change reshaping medicine worldwide.

Gribelyuk applied to medical school after obtaining dual majors in math and neuroscience at New York University. Upon arriving at Dartmouth, “I absolutely fell in love with medicine from day one,” he says.

The Dartmouth environment had a lot to do with it. “The culture of the medical school is very unique in the sense that there’s a lot of thinking about public health policy,” says Gribelyuk. “The TDI culture is very much infused into how people here teach you medicine. From the start you’re taught to ask: How much is this going to cost? What is this going to do to the health system?”

He embarked on an MBA at Tuck to better understand the financial forces influencing the doctor-patient relationship and medicine overall. Like others who pursue the six-year MD-MBA program at Dartmouth, Gribelyuk has received support from a scholarship fund established by Norman C. Payson, MD, ’72, and his wife, Melinda, specifically to assist students in this dual-degree program.

At the same time, Gribelyuk has developed a passion for reconstructive plastic surgery, with specific interests in hand surgery. In July, he will begin a residency in plastic surgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

In Tanzania last year, Gribelyuk led a project to screen and educate people about kidney disease. It was an eye-opening experience, he says, not just in terms of evident need – “there is a westernization of diseases in developing countries” – but also in terms of political reality and its impact on medicine.

Nonetheless, he “found a lot of meaning” in the work, and the call to practice and educate overseas has captured his heart. “This is something that I’ll be doing pretty much for the rest of my life,” he says, “going abroad and building up a system to train residents and physicians.”